Don’s Diary
– Dissembling
A good policy,
service or product should sell itself.
The punters get suspicious when there is a hard sell. In the hard sell, popular leaders will get
involved to their potential detriment.
Dissembling is considered by some in workplace advocacy to be a
necessary art, those that go to Canberra, from there, never seem to lose the
skills, but you do not expect to see it in Freemasonry.
One trick in
dissembling is if asked a question in “the general” to answer it “in the
particular”, and conversely a question “in the particular” is answered in “the
general”. Others may prefer just to
participate in “feather duster” interviews or have superficial audits. Then there are briefings conducted in a
manner which are designed to intimidate and discourage the hard questions being
asked - the number who turn up will be instructive. I read the message from The President of the
BGP today by email, Thursday 7 June as an unusual “hard sell” and answering “in
the particular”, major issues not addressed.
The punters might be
“thrown a few crumbs” to do something.
It may be to occupy a new premise, a common commercial real estate
tactic. They will be offered a free
lease for a period, they will incur new set-up costs or recruitments, build a
business or a lodge, then they will be charged an arm-and-a-leg in rental, and
with their old premise gone there will be nowhere else to go.
Another trick is to
asset-strip and live on the capital as if it is cash flow. If questioned, some just dissemble by saying
“but this is our strategic plan” implying that they have a mandate and you are
stupid for not knowing about it.
Punters will be
unhappy if a deficit is incurred without specific approval by the punters as
debt costs the punter’s money. Without
debt would the increase in Capitation Fees be needed?
On the Capitation Fee
Increase Motion, some punters will be immediately put off by the socialist like
so called “concessions” strategy: from the “each according to his ability, to
each according to his needs (or need)”, especially then when they work out two
things. That the “concession” really
means that some people will be paying more than their share and
cross-subsidising, or the deficit will be increased thus costing them
money. It is an arbitrary wealth
tax. They will jack-up when they think
that they are being taken for mugs and expected to believe that money grows on
trees. The punters will even jack-up
even more if they have been subject to an arbitrary means test on the
Capitation Fee Increase, and if they then discover that anyone, particularly
senior GL officers, have been paid travel allowances from the punter’s money
without a means test.
They will see
themselves being taken for mugs if “big government” is imposed on them in the
form of head-office increases for services they have not asked for, do not need
and do not want to pay for. Without “big
government” increases would the rise in Capitation Fees be needed?
They will jack-up
when decision making is non-transparent.
They will be lost when trust is gone or eroded. All the mob wants to do
is to enjoy their lodges knowing what their taxes are being spent on, not
wasted and for the exclusive benefit of Craft Lodges.
Yours fraternally, Don Paterson